Sunday, January 20, 2008

BOBBY FISCHER is DEAD

Bobby Fischer is dead! Fischer, the first American chess GM to win a world chess championship, died in Reykjavic, Iceland at age 64. The eccentric American acquired Icelandic citizenship in 2005. Prior to moving to Iceland, he was held at a Japanese prison where he was detained for traveling with invalid US documents earlier. He will be remembered by many Filipinos, who he electrified with his brilliant and unusual behavior in the 1972 world chess championship. In that championship, he whipped the Russian world chmpion, Boris Spassky right in Iceland.. Our own Eugene Torre was a very good friend of Fischer. We will miss this man who made chess a popular sport in the Philippines. Photo below shows Fischer, at a tender age of 15, playing against Tigran Petrosian, another Russian super GM.